Russia may shift its rocket launch and spacewalk schedule to send the torch — and maybe even the flame — for next year's Olympics to the International Space Station (ISS), according to Russia's federal space agency and local media reports.

Set to host the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi on the Black Sea coast, Russia plans to launch the traditional Olympic torch relay later this year on Oct. 7. As the flame passes between runners in 2,900 towns and cities spread across the country, a replica of the torch and perhaps an imitation of its flame will liftoff on a Soyuz spacecraft with the next crew members for the space station.

"No decision has been made so far whether an imitation of the Olympic flame or a torch without fire would be moved into outer space," a source in Russia's rocket industry told the Interfax-AVN news service. "No member of the state commission will assume responsibility for moving an open flame close to the Soyuz spacecraft or the ISS."

Flame or no flame, Russia's space agency Roscosmos is planning to do more than deliver the torch to the orbiting outpost, a feat that has been achieved before. The idea is to have cosmonauts carry the torch outside the station on a spacewalk prior to it returning to it Earth.

Robert Pearlman

Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee release

Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch goes into space

The Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch will make history when it is taken into space later this year. The torch is due to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) where it will then be taken on a spacewalk. This will mark the first time that the Olympic Torch has been carried in open space.

The torch is due to arrive at the ISS on the Soyuz TMA-11M manned spaceship in November, and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryazansky and Oleg Kotov have been tasked with the historical assignment. For safety reasons, the torch will not be lit during the spacewalk.

Captain of the spacecraft Mikhail Tyurin, who received the Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch at a ceremony earlier in June, will be responsible for passing it over to the cosmonauts who will take the torch on its unique walk.

Following the mission, cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who is currently based on the ISS, will deliver the special cargo safely back to Earth.

The President of the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, said of the feat: "Nobody has done this before. The spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts with the Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch will be an historic moment in the history of the Olympic Torch Relay. I want to thank the Federal Space Agency for its support which will enable us to take the Sochi 2014 Olympic Torch Relay to the final frontier."

Russia is injecting outer space into the 2014 Olympics — both literally and figuratively. The host nation for the next Winter Games will launch an Olympic torch on a spacewalk and embed meteorite fragments into a special set of gold medals.

Scheduled for Feb. 7 through 23, 2014, in Sochi, Russia, the 22nd Winter Olympics will be preceded by a traditional torch relay to begin on Oct. 7. A total of 14,000 people will carry the torch from Moscow to Sochi, including Valentina Tereshkova, who 50 years ago became the first woman in space.

On Nov. 7, a month into the torch relay with the flame still being run across Russia, an unlit Olympic torch will lift off with three new crew members for the International Space Station.

...Three months (and four days) later, on the ninth day of the Olympics, it will be something that fell from space, rather than landed, that will take the Winter Games' center stage.

The athletes who earn gold on Feb. 15, 2014 will receive a special medal featuring a chip of the meteor that exploded over Russia a year earlier.

The flame may not be headed to orbit, but a torch that will be used in the Sochi opening ceremonies is space-bound.

The aluminum red and silver unlit torch, which is similar to the 14,000 others being used in the terrestrial relay but for the addition of an extra tether, is arriving Monday (Oct. 21) at Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it will launch with the next crew for the International Space Station (ISS) on Nov. 6 (Nov. 7 local time).

"The torch is ready, it will be delivered to Baikonur on the 21st of October," Yuri Pokidov of RSC Energia told Oleg Ostapenko, the newly-appointed chief of Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos, during a tour of the launch site on Saturday.

The torch, which is arriving by cargo plane, will be packed on board the Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft on the day of its launch, Pokidov said.

Robert Pearlman

Rick Mastracchio shared this photo today from Baikonur showing the special tribute to the Olympics on the side of the Soyuz TMA-11M launch shroud:

hoorenz

In this Roscosmos YouTube upload, some more images of the decorated rocket. (starting at 3 minutes in the broadcast).

Robert Pearlman

NASA photo release

The Olympic rings are seen as the Soyuz TMA-11M rocket is erected into position on Tuesday (Nov. 5) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Olympic history unfolded outside the International Space Station Saturday morning (Nov. 9) as two Russian cosmonauts carried an unlit Olympic torch on a symbolic spacewalk relay for the 2014 Games.

Emerging from the orbital outpost at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) through a hatch on the Pirs docking module, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy with Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos began the planned six-hour excursion by posing with the torch for an unprecedented photo opp.

"We will take a picture of it with the space station in the background, with the Earth in the background, and we will try to make sure that we see Russia, and maybe Sochi where the Olympic Games will take place," Kotov said of the torch relay in a NASA interview. "I think these will be very interesting videos and pictures that will be used to promote the Olympic Games."

The 22nd Winter Olympic Games were launched in Sochi, Russia on Friday (Feb. 7) using a torch that flew to the International Space Station and back.

The space-themed spectacle, which took place as part of an elaborate opening ceremony, also featured cosmonauts helping to raise the Russian and Olympic flags in the Fisht Olympic Stadium and the projection of recorded scenes from the historic spacewalk that carried the Olympic torch into open outer space for the first time.

The ceremony also included spacesuited dancers saluting the nation's space race heritage, holding a large model of the Soviet-era Vostok rocket that launched the world's first satellite and human into space, during a theatrical retelling of Russia's history.

...the lighting of the stadium's Olympic Cauldron by Russian star athletes Irina Rodnina and Vladislav Tretiak using the space station flown torch signaled the ceremonial start of the Winter Games and the end of the longest torch relay in Olympic history.